Reel Opinions: Film Reviews – Good Or Bad?

It seems in that in U.K. people love to object to the concept film reviews, I am bewildered by this notion that we don’t like to be told what is good or bad when it comes to deciding what films we view.

Let’s start by saying that I love movies, whether they are classic dramas with powerhouse performances or the big summer blockbusters with their assault on our senses.  If a production is well made there is no genre that I do not enjoy.  This relationship with films led me to seek out information on the form from an early age; as soon as I had a paper route I used my earnings to buy publications like Empire magazine and picked up every free film supplement I could lay my hands on.  Inevitably I read reviews when exposed to these materials, at first I found them vague, my exposure to films was still limited at the time.  My parents were quite strict on  certificate ratings; I remember being the only fourteen year old I knew who hadn’t seen Robocop.  So by the time I was old enough (to get my own way!) I had a backlog of films that I wanted to see, all the teenage boy action staples were viewed, Total Recall, Aliens and of course Robocop.  It was at this point that I was rejecting such films as Taxi Driver and The Last of the Mohicans as “boring”; my infantile opinions were thankfully short lived.

As I grew older my love of films developed, I suddenly found myself feeding on facts and trivia, every birthday or Christmas I looked forward to my next movie guide, and I continued to buy Empire on a monthly basis.  It was at this point that reviews became an important part of my film selection, I slowly started recognizing reviewer’s names, those I agreed with and those I didn’t.  This is when I started to re-visit a number of films I had cast aside; reviews helped me to choose which ones were worth a re-assessment.  Taxi Driver is close to the best films ever made, my earlier rejection of the film was corrected by reading reviews, I realised that maybe I was wrong the first time and took another look.

Now don’t get me wrong I have not agreed with every review I’ve ever read, but on the whole I would have to agree with most.  In 1994 for example The Shawshank Redemption was released, every review I came across gave it their highest rating, unfortunately the film was not shown anywhere near me so I had to wait for the rental.  The day it came out a friend at my local shop saved it for me, I remember getting it at 11.30 at night and watching it there and then.  The film for me is perfect in every way, it’s popularity grew vastly (it became the highest selling rental of the year), luckily for me a few cinemas started to have viewings and I got to see it a few times on the big screen as intended.  There has never been a finer example of word of mouth increasing the popularity of a film, I truly believe that the start of this chain was with people like myself who had seen the review and sought the film as soon as possible.

However still people in this country hate to be told which movies they should watch, I am often accused of being a “film snob” because I refuse to watch productions such as Meet The Spartans or Epic Movie.  I know however from reading reviews of these films that I would hate them.  People often tell me that they are entitled to their opinion, and of course I agree with that, my concern is that people seem to have this negative opinion of film reviewing but not for other forms.  An example of such is seen with food critics, if I were to show you a review of a restaurant that you wanted to try out, that gave highly negative reviews of the quality of food I am sure you would not eat there.  It’s the same with holiday destinations and hotels, people always check a review and decide based on the author’s assessment.  If I were to stand in the queue at my local multiplex and tell everyone waiting for to see Meet The Spartans that they are making a mistake, I would be laughed out of the building.

So why do we have this opinion as a nation?  This weekend in America has seen the film The Love Guru under perform well below estimates, the film which has A-list stars such as Mike Myers and Justin Timberlake has been heavily promoted, so why has it failed to draw in the crowds?  It may have something to do with the fact that it has received terrible reviews with the majority of the press, no doubt it will receive the same critical reception here but I will be surprised if it doesn’t go to No.1 on release over here.

Now I have my criticisms of film reviews, all to often reviews can be swayed by public opinion, (Come on Empire The Full Monty was never a 4 star film) and all too often they can get swept up in the build up to a film, causing them to be overly generous or critical with reviews.  This summer too we have found numerous reviewers “sitting on the fence” with vague opinions, (Indiana Jones anyone?), this is offset the damage if they fall on the wrong side of the overall critical response.  I suppose film reviewers are only human too. 

For all the negatives with film reviews I still find them an essential tool when choosing which film I will view on my next trip to the multiplex.  I wish other people could accept the fact that in the main the people who write reviews are experts, just as they do with experts in other fields, their opinions should be noted if you want a fulfilling cinema experience.